
Seen outside of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church here in Andrews, NC. I’m lobbying Pope Francis to let me make this the Christmas presentation in Saint Peter’s Square next year. Of course, you gotta know that I’ll be adding a bull and a donkey.
Seen outside of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church here in Andrews, NC. I’m lobbying Pope Francis to let me make this the Christmas presentation in Saint Peter’s Square next year. Of course, you gotta know that I’ll be adding a bull and a donkey.
Filed under Christmas
As mentioned in a previous post, no Masses at the Church for various and sundry reasons. Grrr. However, Mass in the rectory chapel very much makes me feel like the donkey-priest near the manger in the cave, you know, hidden with Christ in God.
Meanwhile, a water main break in town. Meanwhile, the arsonist is back at it with some houses going up in flames over the past weeks, and, yes, just the other day. Proven as arson. Meanwhile, a gunshot after midnight last night, Christmas night, in back of the neighborhood, and then a very loud truck racing away.
Jesus came among us useless and violent lot because God loved the world so much that He sent His only begotten Son among us, His Eternal Word now Incarnate of the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God. We sing with the angels: Glory to God in the Highest!
Filed under Christmas
These pictures were taken hours before Christmas Night Mass of the Lord’s Birth was to be celebrated. But instead, when I should otherwise have been up at church turning up the heat and getting the altar ready it started snowing a dripping wet, heavy blanket freezing more than it was with precipitously precipitating temps rushing down from near 50゚above zero to a predicted 10゚above zero Fahrenheit. So, lots of danger, lots of black ice, crusty ice, crystalline ice, slippery ice… I’m thinking of the elderly of the parish…
I’m from Minnesota, and this bit of snow and freezing rain and ice wouldn’t have stopped me one bit, but the driveway to the church is as steep as a staircase and there’s zero chance anyone could drive or walk up, even on the actual staircase next to the driveway without crashes and broken legs. The “blizzard” of inches!
Even worse, WNC is suffering an “outbreak” of “cases” of China Virus among some super-service oriented people, also among my parishioners, who are everywhere with everyone in WNC all the time, and they are down with Covid. To give an example of what I mean by super-service oriented: one is a FedEx driver. And there are way too many all at once, also amongst parishioners coming here also from surrounding counties and surrounding states. So, to be prudent – for once – we’re locked down. This could drag on into the new year as people go through their imposed or self-imposed quarantines.
I myself was tested way back, also with our Police Force (I went down with the Chief of the Day®). All told, if I remember correctly, three brain-swab tests over time, all negative. No brains I guess. Anyway, the head of the county health invited me to come back the next day to get the antibody test which was being delivered. But then she said she changed her mind and wasn’t going to do it. Her decision was based, she said, on the fact, she said, that the antibody test is not at all accurate. I tried to get tested the other day, but was turned away again, this time in another county. They did the test for others ahead in the line but when it came to me, they said no, as I described what services I was providing up at the jail and getting groceries for the elderly-co-morbidities people, saying I just wanted to be prudent. No. Rejected for testing. That kinda makes me wonder what it’s all about… as it seems they don’t want to take service oriented people out of the community. I tried, right?
But then the storm. The great fear expressed by many. That caught me unexpectedly. So, no Mass as no one, I was told, were going to come. Sigh. Anyway, absolutely Confessions, Last Rites, etc., will go on. No fear with yours truly. But the numbers of cases are a bit freaky round about the town and the local counties. We do our best. Hopefully things will be back to completely normal in a week or two.
Filed under Christmas, Coronavirus
Don’t think I haven’t ever been in the habit of reading the Roman Martyrology daily. With that in mind…
Proclamation of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ:
THE TWENTY-FIFTH DAY OF DECEMBER:
… the whole world being at peace…
THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE FLESH.
/// That’s nice Styrofoam. All true. But lies are cloaked in truth, right? Lies can come about through telling part of the truth, looking fulsome, but actually omitting, well, really, pretty much everything, but – Hey! – leaving people with nice feelings! “Jesus is nice and even as maybe perhaps as important as Caesar ’cause He’s mentioned along with Caesar! That’s nice!
I suppose people will think I’m a shallow heretic and a dullard in that I can’t appreciate the intervention of the Word Incarnate in human history at just the right time, and that that’s the point of the Roman Martyrology’s account, and that not everything can always and in every way say everything and therefore I should just cool my jets and appreciate what is presented for what it’s worth and just get over it. After all, there are words like “covenant” and “consecrate” and stuff like that there. And tinkeritis must be avoided at all costs, even regarding some rather ill phrased matters about our salvation, because, you know, we’re used to it. But even the intensely devout are not assisted in their faith by such words as “covenant” and “consecrate” when other words are purposely omitted by self-congratulatory intelligentia who do know more but are too smug to JUST SAY WHAT WE NEED TO HEAR.
I’m an equal opportunity disdainer of tender snowflake dumbing down wherever I find it, whether after or even before Vatican II. And anyway, what dullard made Vatican II the absolute center of human history, replacing the Incarnate Word? Sound’s blasphemous to me, and also ignorant. I mean, most heresies came about before Vatican II and most were presented in – oooo! – Latin!!! Now that I’ve successfully made people angry, let’s make the point (I only mention here a couple of possible tweakings):
/// I can just hear it now, you know, all the condemnations:
Meanwhile, do you know who wasn’t so taken with being clever with dumbed down religious and secular history? The angels knew: it was certain little shepherd boys. And, I have to say, this donkey-priest just loves this:
This ultra-short film is a 1968 Disney animated presentation, which has much more sense, much more faith than the Roman Martyrology. Listen to the narrator. If you didn’t catch it, little Aaron is repentant of his own SIN of hatred (after the horrific non-peaceful violence that took place in his own life), SIN representing the eons of SIN and hatred that sets the backdrop for Jesus to come into this world so as to save us from SIN, He, Jesus, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Prince of the Most Profound Peace, who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire, yes, that little Babe in the manger. The faith isn’t about our sense – our feelings – of security with the way we’ve always had mere stuff like a book. The faith is about the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God’s Divine Son Jesus saving us from a world which was being up to anything except for peace. Obvious, right? Nope. We have to say it: Jesus is the One; Jesus as the only One saving us from sin.
♬ Pah-rum-pa-pum-pum. ♬
Amen.
Filed under Christmas
Last minute preparations in the cave. Fresh hay in the manger. Swaddling clothes. Where’s the ox? Get the donkey! Look, a star! Are those angels I hear?
The Day Off started last Saturday with phone calls coming in over other calls all in the middle of The-Priest-Sprint® that runs, so to speak, from about 4:00 AM Saturday morning until Sunday night when I collapse, having gotten up at 2:00 AM on Sunday. Those calls were weighing on me when texts came in with a request that would require bilocation all day on the Day Off. But I ain’t no Padre Pio. Ain’t gonna happen. I had to put that off for another Day Off, having found out that I had already been volunteered by higher-ups to make an intervention that would clock something between 500 and 600 miles on Sassy the Subaru on the Day Off. I haven’t yet recovered from that, with yet more phone calls requiring follow-ups for analogous situations. The Day Off started at 1:45 AM and didn’t stop until something like just before 10:00 PM.
The days are running together with The-Priest-Sprint® continuing more than just the weekend. Time runs together, melts into one time when past is future, future is past, a blur in the midst of the present. All a bit surreal. But then, the good Lord holds all time in His hands as just another creation of His. He was born in time that we might be borne up through, with and in Him into eternity. He was born to die that we might live. He was born upon the wood of the manger that when He would be lifted up on the wood of the cross He might, as He said, draw all to Himself, to heaven, but, on Calvary, right through all of hell broken out. He conquered the violence of Herod at His birth in Bethlehem. He conquered the violence of hell at our birth to life on Calvary. The disparateness of time is brought together in His Heart. And it is with His Heart that we find the Immaculate Heart of His dear Immaculate Virgin Mother. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Mary.
This is put up in honor to Father Gordon MacRae, who, setting such a good example under impossible circumstances, keeps up his good humor. It’s so important to keep up with good humor under the impossible circumstances we’re all in. The first example is from Father Gordon. I added the second, because donkeys are always with the Holy Family, right from the start in Bethlehem.
Filed under Christmas
The Light of the Nations marches on. Day five of Hanukkah.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is safely back in the shrine on the hill up behind the church after the procession the other day. And inside the church Our Lady of Fatima has taken her place:
Maybe this is what the U.S. Census Bureau meant by priests “keeping” women in their rectories!
Hey! On that note, I really should have told them about Jesus residing with me as well, in the Tabernacle, a mighty small room, but He’s here with me!
Meanwhile, this was texted to me:
Don’t be mad at the priest for sitting down. He might have gotten his leg blown off, or his other arm torn out. But we still want to put in an altar rail to make reception of Holy Communion, of the Light of the World, a bit easier. Jesus is the Light of the World, and Mary is the Arc of the Covenant.
Filed under Christmas, Jewish-Catholic dialogue
Dear Pope Francis, why not next year put me, your Missionary of Mercy, in charge of the Christmas creche in front of the obelisk? Yes. Do it.
My idea for Christmas 2021? A life-size = relatively tiny crib scene, a small manger, smaller than the width of the obelisk, all respectful of the Word Incarnate, of His dear, humble Immaculate Virgin Mother, of quiet Saint Joseph, a few shepherds, a joyful angel. That’s it. Donate the money for the overly ostentatious tree to, say, small parish churches like mine, you know, for the installation of altar rails, of a real altar. Seriously.
Jesus came to us, to these peripheries, with humility, in the quiet of the night, a Light in the darkness. Tiny. Humble. Good and kind. The Living Truth. That’s not just the symbol, the message. Let’s point all to Jesus, to the manner in which He chose to come among us.
Filed under Christmas, Jesus, Pope Francis
The front window of the tiny rectory is progressing, provoking compliments from pious souls and condemnation from across the spectrum.
Firstly, a word about manure:
Secondly, about the haters:
Opposites attract. Idiots attract. The two extremes are merely in reaction to each other, having nothing to do with the Living Truth. The two extremes are like the poles of a broken gyroscope wildly flipping spinning out of control, not with the Truth being the mean between the two, but flying apart from the Truth, only concerned about each other. But Crux stat dum volvitur orbis. The Cross remains steadfast while the world hopelessly spins itself into a vertigoed vortex.
Meanwhile, there is le père Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange OP, commenting in his tome on Faith, summarizing the entirety of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas regarding the Common Doctor’s struggle in understanding the oneness, the univocality of the Judeo-Catholic Religion, with Thomas landing finally on the presentation that all that which is Jewish is all that which is Catholic, though, of course, with the chosen people looking forward to receiving Jesus, the Messiah, the Suffering Servant, and the Catholics being those who have received Jesus, whether being of Jewish lineage or from among the Gentiles.
This refers to the radical univocality of Sacred Tradition, that supernatural faith received by any individual always in the same way with the same content of that supernatural faith. There is a down to earth pedagogy for human brains to be led to assent to that which is supernatural, i.e., through the conscience. Thomas himself comments on this at great length, distinguishing between that which is supernatural faith and that which has been touched by a necessary exercise in theology on our part.
Jesus, the ever proclaimed Son of David, said it best: “Salvation is from the Jews.”
I’ll just keep my window up and let the extremists otherwise ignore Jesus and attack each other, throwing manure at each other.
After all, Crux stat dum volvitur orbis. I’ll stick with the Cross, a tiny depiction of which you can just make out in the center of the Star of David up top of the window.
Hanukkah 2020 will begin the evening of Thursday, December 10 and will end the evening of Friday, December 18. A Menorah of sorts is ready to go in the window, with a small servant candle at the ready. Some might say that Jewish feasts are forbidden to be celebrated. But is God’s honoring the sacred liturgy in the temple not to itself be honored? Sure, Jesus, and we with Him, are the new Temple built of living stones, as the Holy Spirit indicates. Yes. But I think it is just fine to rejoice with God’s rejoicing with the miracle of lights. Yes. Jesus, the Temple Himself, ferociously objected to the abuse of the temple built of mere physical stones.
You don’t have to light a Menorah, but don’t condemn me lighting one up either. You wouldn’t want Jesus to take the whip of cords to your back end, would you? No, really, you wouldn’t. :-)
But I can already hear the spluttering about how I’m a heretic saying that I’m saying that the former covenants are themselves salvific apart from Jesus. No. I didn’t say that. I insist that all former covenants looked forward to the new and eternal covenant in the Blood of the Lamb. There is not one former covenant which was stuck on itself apart from the Messiah to come. Get it? We honor the Jews with great love by inviting them to learn more about Jesus, Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception, that great Woman of Genesis 3:15 in her battle over against the Serpent, the Dragon of old, Satan. Yes. Let’s help introduce our Jewish friends to Mary’s Son, Jesus, for Salvation is aleady from the Jews.
Filed under Christmas, Jesus, Jewish-Catholic dialogue
I’m a bit rough on Saint Paul VI, who gave an address in Nazareth on 5 January 1964 in which he spoke wonderfully about the Holy Family. Perhaps I’m jaded, but I thought it was too sweet about the Holy Family, too nice, too peaceful, too calm, too silent, so contemplative, so prayerful. I’m sure he meant all that in an innocuous manner. But whatever his good and holy intentions, well, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I make that really quite clear.
Also, when I get on a rant like this, all worked up, I might make brave in attributing things to those to whom they don’t belong. I don’t know if it was in this particular recorded homily or another the same day in which I attributed the phrase “field hospital” not only to Pope Francis but also perhaps to Saint John Paul II, et al. Sorry about that. Don’t get stuck on that kind of thing. I’m getting older. Forgive me. The point is about holiness embracing chaos for holiness’ sake, you know, like Jesus stretching out His arms to embrace us… on the cross… And this chaos started at His birth and never stopped…
Paul VI did, of course, make plenty of great points about the spiritual life and the correct priorities in life we should all have. I agree with all those. But still, it set me into rant mode. Here’s that address of Paul VI. You might want to read over it before listening to the homily. Perhaps I go into rant mode because Paul VI, a saint, flies right over my head and I just don’t get what he’s on about.
From an address by Saint Paul VI, pope
(Nazareth, January 5, 1964) Nazareth, a model
Nazareth is a kind of school where we may begin to discover what Christ’s life was like and even to understand his Gospel. Here we can observe and ponder Continue reading
Filed under Christmas
I received a proclamation of “Touché” from the reader who sent in the previous Smart Alec dish towel for the answer I gave in response. Here:
But that admission was just to set me off guard and give me a false sense of confidence, as I was then immediately countered by… this other dish towel above.
There is also an entirely good explanation for the flabbergastery bluster going on here. This has nothing to do with any assertion that you could never find anywhere in the entire world a wise man, much less three of them, and at the same time and place. No.
This is all about there being only three wise men of all the uncountable wise men in all the world who showed up. Only three?!!!? Yes, but there is also an explanation for that. All the other wise men are busy trying to teach all the women folk how to be wise…
I was at the door of a parishioner’s house last evening, and was very taken by this Christmas scene that had been tacked up there. So joyful. So peaceful. I note that all the animals, including the donkey, have their ears back, listening for any danger that might disturb their Almighty Creator so humbly come among us. The donkey is a professional at this. All donkeys are Guard-Donkeys. Oh, by the way, I was the donkey at the door. If you look closely, you’ll see that there are two donkeys pictured in the picture.
This was sent in to Arise! Hmmm… Let’s take a look at that… [The one who sent this in, BTW, has a great sense of humor, and won’t mind a bit that I’m fisking this dish cloth hanging in front of the stove. What I say, although incisive, will I hope, also bring about a wee laugh.]
And all this – let us be most clear – NOT because they are women, but because these three individual women would proclaim themselves as being wise (which the three kings never did), ending up, in their lack of wisdom, rejecting the entire economy of salvation to put themselves in front of everyone, drawing attention to themselves, you know, all in the name of Feminism, which brings the peace of a mere lack of war, what with everyone being dead already, instead of the sword of division which Jesus in His perfect wisdom came to bring, a sword of truth which instead brings us to reality, to repentance, to forgiveness, and therefore to love and respect for others, unto truth and the joy of the Holy Spirit, and therefore unto the true peace of Heaven. Jesus is the Prince of the Most Profound Peace. I’ll stick with His ways so far above the ways of any of us who think we are wise. We have all sinned against Him whom we have all pierced. We have all thought ourselves to be wise… So… Jesus is the One. He’s the only One.
Having said all that, I have to say that that dish towel perfectly sums up the Benedictine sisters I had for teachers when I was kid, that is, after 1968 and into the early 1970s. Yikes!
The Christmas blessing Urbi et Orbi (to the City and the World). There’s a plenary indulgence with this, even through, by concession the modern means of social communication.
Happy Merry Christmas!
Filed under Christmas, Pope Francis
Some preliminaries:
Here’s the deal: Unlike eOR, the saints have it that they themselves are the worst sinners of all, for God loves us also individually and Jesus has stood in our place, the Innocent for the guilty, also individually, so that only I have sinned against Him and therefore only I can be the absolute worst sinner of all before Him. He loves me… and I myself offended Him. When Jesus lays down His life for us, He doesn’t do that because we’ve somehow successfully proven to Him, to society and to ourselves that we’re already wonderful, that we don’t need Him to lay down His life for us so as to have the right in His own justice to save us. He does this because He love us before we have loved Him. When we realize this we are stricken with awe, with love, with thanksgiving, much like the soldier on Calvary who thrust his sword into the side of Jesus, only then saying: “Truly this Man was the Son of God.”
When it comes to Confession, not to Santa Claus but to Jesus in the Confessional, we’re simply just to make a Confession that has four aspects starting with the letter “C”:
And this is what brings one such great joy when one has actually made a good Confession, an integral, honest Confession. We stand forgiven. We’re on our way to heaven. We are filled with great joy. This is the joy of the Holy Spirit who was sent among for the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness is brought about by the Holy Spirit flooding us with sanctifying grace. There’s no room for the guilt. We are then tabernacles of the Holy Spirit. We bear in our mortal frame the presence of the Most Holy Trinity. We are now eager to live love: “If you love me, keep the commandments” says Jesus to each of us, each of us, also to me, to you. Chaste lives, self-giving lives, honest lives, lives in which Jesus Himself shines out, His goodness, His kindness, His truth.
When we suddenly realize the greatness of the Lord’s majesty, the love and truth behind the wounds also on His risen body, that He will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire, we also instantly recognize just how far away we ourselves have been, perhaps enough that we reject the cuteness of eOR above, and actually find ourselves on our knees for a good Christmas Confession.
So… eOR… we might ride eOR to the Confessional, contemplating as we go our rationalizations, but then when we get into the Confessional, much better not to sing like eOR, composing scenarios and operettas, but instead just laying it out our sins, simply, in all humility, before Jesus, with those wounds upon Him, Jesus, ever so good, ever so kind, always the Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception. Amen.
Filed under Christmas, Confession, Donkeys, Humor
Both neighbors are firefighters. They talk about a “far” that needs a fightin’. This, however, was sent in by a 25 year vet of the Sheriff’s Department. There is a rivalry between firefighters and law enforcement…